


(⌐▨_▨)

by mrozin



Series: sagukai creations challenges [1]
Category: Magic Kaito
Genre: Gen, M/M, i wanna tag all three of them in a relationship tag but aoko is in it so shortly that id feel bad, next time bb, they're barely friends and they're definitely not dating but theyve both got big fat crushes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-28
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-11-07 00:22:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17950037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrozin/pseuds/mrozin
Summary: Saguru and Kaito go snack shopping for a study sleepover and bond the tiniest bit along the way.





	(⌐▨_▨)

**Author's Note:**

> my contribution to the sagukai creations challenge over on [tumblr](https://sagukaicreationschallenge.tumblr.com/)! it's barely edited because ive lost all control over my life. have mercy

Saguru walks down the near-deserted street, scanning his surroundings by habit and squinting against the glare of the setting sun. Their overnight study session at Aoko-san’s house had started productively but sheer force of will alone couldn’t carry him and Aoko-san through high school maths like it had with English and Japanese. 

Kuroba-kun (who hadn’t even attempted to study with them and who assumably is only tagging along for lack of anything better to do than laugh at their academic misery) keeps pace to his right, scowling faintly at the horizon line and muttering rudely about Aoko-san under his breath. 

“Go get us some snacks, go get us some slushies, go get us the moon,” he mocks, his voice a perfect copy of Aoko-san’s.

“Stop that,” Saguru tells him. “It’s not polite.”

He regrets the words nearly as soon as he’s said them. There’s no quicker way to bring yourself under fire than telling Kuroba Kaito not to do something. Having essentially offered himself up on a silver platter, all Saguru can do is restrain the urge to sigh as Kuroba-kun turns a sharp grin on him.

“Don’t,” he demands counterproductively.

“Stop that; it’s not polite,” Kuroba-kun repeats, stealing Saguru’s voice like a gem. 

Then he very maturely sticks his tongue out and skips forward a few paces, as if worried Saguru will make a grab at him, but laughing brightly. The scene makes an uncomfortably apt metaphor of Kuroba-kun’s life. Taunting, retreating. Terror and mirth twisted together. Saguru watches the play of light on his (friend’s?) grinning face and discovers an ache in his chest. 

Feelings are so inconvenient. Saguru pinches the bridge of his nose, doing his level best to bury the mass of concern, indignation, fury, and warmth that rose as a tide in his mind every time he thought of Kuroba-kun, and squints again at the sun. It’s almost set. Slivers of light catch and fracture in passing store windows, hitting his eyes at just the right angle to make him detest being alive.

“Oi,” Kuroba-kun says, suddenly at his side again.

A flick of the wrist in Saguru’s peripheral and a pair of sunglasses settle over his irritated eyes, Kuroba-kun predictably having calculated what the exact angle of Saguru’s head would be as he turned to respond. Saguru falters, startled, fingers reaching up to flutter hesitantly over the plastic rims.

It’s surprising. He and Kuroba-kun aren’t much for helping each other manage annoyances. More often than not, they are each others’ annoyances. He strokes the rim again, analytical this time, automatically looking for the trick in this (whatever this is). But there’s no trick. They’re just sunglasses. Probably bought from a corner shop just like the one they’re headed for now. 

He’s not stupid enough to still hope Kuroba-kun might have left prints on them, but he frets, for a moment, about leaving his own. It’s a worry dismissed quickly as unreasonable. He and Kuroba-kun have been classmates for a good while already; if Kuroba-kun wanted his prints to frame him for something he’d have them by now, and even if he didn’t, he’d be able to get them easily enough. 

Saguru is no Kaitou Kid. He can’t spend days upon days in a classroom and leave only the faintest traces of himself behind. 

They arrive at the corner shop before Saguru can work himself into another snit about how completely Kuroba-kun disappears from his own life and how at least half of his motivation for it slots neatly under ‘To Spite Saguru Personally, Because I Am A Bastard, Kekeke’.

Kuroba-kun beelines for the hot foods section immediately. The shelves aren’t quite tall enough for Saguru to lose sight of him. Saguru appreciates that; it’s hard enough keeping track of Kuroba-kun in familiar places, and in public it’s near-impossible. Too many variables. 

Wandering the aisles and picking up the odd pastry and bag of crisps makes him suddenly, acutely miss English corner shops. He hasn’t had a pork pie in ages. The taste of jaffa cake seems more like a half-forgotten dream than a real memory.

“What’s the word for these?” he calls to Kuroba-kun, realizing that he’s forgotten the Japanese phrase for where they are. 

Kuroba-kun, standing in the frozen section, turns and is forced to stand on his tiptoes to see Saguru over the rows of snacks. His arms are curled around two small mountains of goods; some are even balanced on his head and, impossibly, his shoulders. An orange ice lolly sticks out of his mouth, unwrapped and unpaid for. He doesn’t look even remotely ashamed. 

“Hmm?” 

Saguru’s hand reflexively goes to pinch at the bridge of his nose, dislodging his own armful of snacks and making him hastily re-balance them all. For the sake of his sanity, he doesn’t comment on Kuroba-kun’s complete dismissal of social etiquette, instead tossing his head to gesture at the shop around them. Kuroba-kun’s muffled “ah,” of realization escapes as more of an _mm_ sound. 

He pops the ice lolly out of his mouth. _“Konbini.”_

Then he sucks the treat back in -- an action that Saguru flushes at and averts his eyes from quickly -- and loudly rips open a bag of crisps with the gleam of sadism in his eye. He doesn’t even eat any; just rips them open with an evil little grin. Saguru follows his gaze to the cashier, who is watching Kuroba-kun with the deadeyed stare of retail workers worldwide.

“Are you done?” Saguru asks longsufferingly.

“Almost,” Kuroba-kun answers, finishing his ice lolly and vanishing the stick somewhere. He snags a box of candy seemingly at random, tears it open, and stares directly at the cashier as he waterfalls small pieces of what is possibly chocolate into his open mouth. 

“You’re done,” Saguru decides.

He snags Kuroba-kun’s arm and drags him, laughing, up to the till. They dump all of their items onto the counter, idly wrestling over a piece of chicken from the hot foods section while they wait to be rung up. Saguru’s superior reach comes in handy here; he keeps Kuroba-kun away by shoving a palm against his forehead and locking his elbow. 

Kuroba-kun has always been an sore loser, which is one of his more amusing personality traits, but Saguru’s entertainment is quickly dashed by his poor attention span. Just as the cashier is about to finish up Kuroba-kun forgets all about grumbling under his breath at ‘stupid freaking Hakubastard’ and snags a box of strawberry pocky, tossing it onto the counter. It poofs back into his palm before the cashier can bag it, making them shout in surprise, which both he and Saguru ignore.

“They’re my favorite,” Kuroba-kun says, bouncing the treat between his hands. Saguru pays the cashier without looking at them, eyes on the curl of Kuroba-kun’s fingers around his snack.

“They’re not,” Saguru says. He snakes his wrists through three of the bags and Kuroba-kun more flamboyantly balances the other two on top of his head, both of them turning and making for the door. “You buy chocolate flavor from the vending machine almost every day at lunch.”

Caught, Kuroba-kun turns his face away. It’s a useless gesture. Any detective could easily spot the curl of his smile, the way his cheeks bunch with it. Saguru doesn’t fool himself into thinking he’s catching anything more than Kuroba-kun is willing to offer him.

One day he will. That’s what makes this fun. 

“Stalker,” Kuroba-kun accuses. His voice could almost be fond. 

Saguru doesn’t deny it. “So? Which flavor is your favorite?”

“You just said. I get chocolate at lunch almost every day,” Kuroba-kun says, popping his plastic bags into the air and catching them on his head, over and over again, like a seal doing tricks. 

Saguru hums noncommittally but doesn’t press. At some point during their walk back to Aoko-san’s house, Kuroba-kun flips himself over, walking on his hands with the bags hanging from his ankles. Somehow he knows where to put his hands even in the dark.

Saguru opens the front door -- unlocked, even now, when it’s night time; he should talk to Aoko-san about that -- for Kuroba-kun, who walks in and is greeted with Aoko-san’s gusty sigh. She stands in the living room, staring at them with her arms crossed. 

“Why,” she says flatly.

“For fun and profit,” Kuroba answers, craning his neck to look at her. 

She shakes her head and sits on the floor by the coffee table, where Saguru notices three bowls of noodles have been set out, utensils and all. “I made noodles while you were out.” 

Kuroba-kun lets loose an _ooo_ of interest and makes his way over to her. He tilts his head so that the box of strawberry pocky balanced on top of it tips into her lap, not stopping to watch the way her face softens like Saguru does. Instead he appears to break his spine in half to gently set the bags hooked on his ankles down and slip his feet from the handles. 

Falling into a bridge and then effortlessly pulling himself upright with the sort of core strength Saguru can almost taste, Kuroba-kun walks over on his feet to seat himself beside Aoko-san, digging into his noodles with one hand and digging into a bag with the other. 

He pulls out a box of matcha flavored pocky that Saguru hadn’t noticed in the pile of snacks, stretches his arm out obnoxiously in Saguru’s direction, and rattles it. 

_Favorite,_ he mouths silently. 

Saguru smiles. He joins them at the table -- he and Kuroba-kun at each end, Aoko-san in the middle -- and grabs a vanilla flavored box from one of the bags on his wrists, shaking it back at him. 

Kuroba-kun’s face screws up. “Does everything have to be a princely white motif with you?”

Saguru rolls his eyes. “Western thing,” he explains to Aoko-san, who is visibly trying to make the jump between death and princes and coming up short. 

Her expression clears with understanding and the blankness of someone mentally preparing to tune out the next half hour of their surroundings, which is a smart move on her part, because Saguru is already taking a breath to launch himself into a round of snappy remarks and hidden meanings. He’s thwarted by Kuroba-kun’s need for dramatics, as he so often is.

“WE FORGOT THE SLUSHIES,” he cries, throwing himself onto the floor. “AND THE MOON!”

Aoko-san turns on him like a tiger, correctly assuming that last comment is aimed at her. Saguru quietly moves the bowls below the table where they won’t be knocked into, upended, or used as projectiles. 

He leans back. At some point, the whoosh of a broomstick cutting through the air has become commonplace, almost comforting in its mundanity. Saguru trips Kuroba-kun as he darts past and hides a smirk by turning his head into his shoulder.

Eventually they fall asleep around the table, heads pillowed on arms, paper and pocky spread out between them. It’s overcast the next morning. 

Saguru wears the sunglasses anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> and thats how saguru went from "the new transfer student omg omg" to "that one loser who wore sunglasses inside for like a week, what the hell"
> 
> hmu on my tumblr [mrozind](https://mrozind.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
